Comparing Foucault's 'Discipline And Punish'

With supermax prison, many feel that they need in order to help with prison overcrowding and maintaining control over inmates that are a threat to the security as well as staff and other inmates. “The Federal Bureau of Prisons returned to the idea of controlling the most violent and disruptive inmates in indefinite solitary confinement when it opened Alcatraz in 1934”(Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Over the years it was “judged as an expensive failure, it symbolized a penal philosophy that was outdated in an era that espoused rehabilitation, not punishment, as a goal of incarceration”(Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Following these issues, it was later closed. Although some felt that these behaviors came from the long-term segregation some argued

A lot of research has been put into the effects of imprisonment and the variables that influence how an offender adapts to confinement, what some of the consequences of confinement are. Some of the variables that contribute to how an offender will adapt and socialize in prison, would be how they were raised and socialized before prison, the environment that the prison creates for the offenders; and the influences that offenders face in prison and the Cliques that they associate with and the support they have from within the community. Prison conditions need to be modified as well as the practices of most prisons in the United States, integrating more programs that will prepare an offender for a successful reintegration into society, as well as to insure a successful long-term adjustment to parole.

Another key point is that the Code not only introduces a set of punishments but for each of the three classes in Babylonian society. The seriousness of the punishment depend on the class of the victim and the offender. Babylonia was not the only society to give punishment by status, ancient Indian, Law of Manu, punished those in way of caste system. The Brahmins who were the upper-caste were normally fined for punishment and even escaped from it. On the opposite end of the caste system the Shudra, who are the lower-caste, would have harsher punishments for the simplest offenses.

Criminals that have been convicted of murder, rape, child abuse, and other violent crimes due deserve some punishment. They get thrown in jail where they suffer boredom and other minor difficulties, but typically they do not suffer the way they made their victims suffer. Non-violent offenders, crimes like auto-theft or burglary, should not suffer beatings and other harmful things that other inmates might force upon them. They broke the law without hurting people physically, so they should have to suffer through assault in prison. No, inmates should not be harmed physically, emotionally, or physically, but it will happen in prison and when it happens it should be the violent contenders that are

Miller's writing style is how he places the viewer/ reader in the middle of the action. Style is the way writing is dressed up (or down) to fit the specific context, purpose, or audience. The style in writing can be defined as the way a writer writes and it is the technique which an individual author uses in his writing. How a writer chooses words and structures sentences to achieve a certain effect is also an element of style. In Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, Miller uses the Salem Witchcraft Trials to demonstrate how easily people can be drawn into a kind of mob mentality which ultimately hurts innocent people.

Factors Contributing to the Self-Legitimacy of Prison Officers Bottoms and Tankebe (2012) define the dialogic nature of legitimacy, i.e. power holders’ legitimacy and self-legitimacy. Self-legitimacy is a process of constructing, affirming and resisting certain self-images of the power holder (Tankebe, 2014). Prison officers enter into interactions with “audiences” (e.g. prisoners) with the view of demonstrating and affirming certain possible selves or identities, which are believed to be justified holders of power (Tankebe, 2014). Furthermore, contacts between prison officers and their colleagues, superiors and prisoners represent those moments in which prison officers have the opportunity to confirm their previously constructed selves (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2013; Tyler and Blader, 2000). The roots of prison officers’ self-legitimacy are thus found in various relationships they find themselves in (relationships with colleagues, superiors and prisoners), and in

One of the major issues with the traditional prison design was the excessive mental pressure prisons often put on inmates and guards. According to some of the psychological researches, spaces by its size and scale, colors and windowless environment can also influenced the psychological effects on the ones who occupy them. Architectural design is all about the details, including choosing the appropriate colors, material and lighting for the specific function in the space, using the appropriate form, scale, and movement. Prison should improve and encourage becoming a place for mental health to lessen the risk of deterioration through close support, high-quality care and safe environment for the inmates to thrive.

In my first reading of Michel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punishment, I looked at the penal system specifically the prison system as the center of the disciplinary society. Given how the prison seems to be the central idea in his work. But through looking at the other works of Foucault and after reassessing Discipline and Punishment I realized it was not that the prison system was at the center of a disciplinary society rather it was simply a part of the disciplinary system as a whole. One key area that Foucault highlights early on in his book though is the transitioning of the penal systems in the late 18th century and in the beginning of the 19th century where he places side by side the torture and public execution of an individual and the daily schedule of young prisoners in Paris which is 80 years after the torture account; a transition from the old system wherein punishment, torture and public execution were all utilized as a means of separating those who cross their boundaries with the higher power which was at this time the

At the end of the book Browning brings to light two psychological experiments that are important in understanding a bit of why ordinary men would commit these actions. The first experiment that Browning discusses is Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. Zimbardo wanted to test whether the brutality of prison guards occurred due to environment of the prison or the personalities of the guards. In order to test this he set up a mock prison in the bottom of Stanford University giving half of the volunteers the role of a prisoner and the other half the role of a guard. The Simply Psychology website on this experiment stated that Zimbardo’s volunteer guards, most of which admitted to enjoying the role of authority, harassed, beat, and taunted the prisoners.

Penology is a system that a totalitarian government highly pays attention to. Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punishment traces the history of sovereign discipline and punishment from the medieval ages until the modern age in Western society. He argues that sovereign or authoritative punishment took four forms which are: torture – punishment – discipline – prison. Foucault examined the act of torturing and concluded that the public execution was ultimately an ineffective use of the body and non-economical, it also as applied non-uniformly and haphazardly. Thus, it was the antithesis of the more modern concerns of the state: order and generalization.

Where inmates are able to work in prison industries. The fifth era is the Punitive era where a prison is a place for strict punishment and custody. This was followed by the Treatment era where treatment was used as punishments against the riots and reform came from the Medical Model, therapy, and classification. The Community-based and Warehouse era resulted in a boost and overcrowding in the prison population and using community-based programs to reform prisoners. The

Since the 18th century, deterrence was the guiding principle when it came to the handling of criminals. The forms of punishment were banishment, brutality, and the frequent use of barbaric forms of punishment and execution ultimately gave way in the late 1700s to a treatment philosophy espoused by the Quakers in Pennsylvania, who opposed the undisciplined management and violent conditions of the Philadelphia jail (Midgley, Livermore, 2009). Soon after the first wave of deinstitutionalization in the United States, when state hospitals radically downsized subsequent to the passage of the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act of 1963 (Midgley, Livermore, 2009).

It was 1920 in America and new amendment had been added to the constitution. It was called Prohibition. Prohibition was a law that made it illegal to sell, produce,import and consume alcohol. Many crimes occurred in 1920 that were alcohol related, so it was thought that if alcohol was banned, then crime rates would drop. How very wrong they were.